


qu'ici c'est nous les rois

by radianceofthefuture



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Theatre, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Oblivious Enjolras, Pining, Romeo and Juliet References, Shakespeare, Short Grantaire, Slow Burn, high school theatre, it's set in the states so that i can talk shit about our public school system
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 11:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15118196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radianceofthefuture/pseuds/radianceofthefuture
Summary: Enjolras remained silent as he wondered why it was that Jehan’s assertion seemed so incongruous with how he experienced Grantaire’s acting. Obviously Grantaire was gifted, there was no denying that; but the idea of his memory watering down that giftedness was laughably incorrect. Enjolras had met Grantaire in fourth grade while rehearsing their elementary school’s production of Seussical, and from their first rehearsal Grantaire’s abilities had wormed their way into Enjolras’ soul, curled up in the space around his heart, and refused banishment. It was an inalienable fact of his existence; the sky was blue, Combeferre was his best friend, and Grantaire was a genius.(Wherein there is a high school production of Romeo and Juliet, Grantaire is an enigma, and Enjolras just wants to figure out what's going on)





	qu'ici c'est nous les rois

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this for about three months now, and I'm about as close to satisfied with it as I'll probably ever be, so I hope you like it.
> 
> (Note: to make this fic better reflect the present day as well as the demographics of most high school theatre programs, I've made Joly and Feuilly girls. It doesn't really impact the story in any way, I just thought I should let you know.)

In Enjolras’ mind, there was nothing that could quite compare to the first theatre class of the year.

There was something that couldn’t be replicated about the experience of finding a house seat in the school’s dilapidated auditorium and watching the rest of the class meander in, knowing that in a few short months, the people he had known for a decade and the people whose faces he was seeing for the first time right now would blend together as part of an extended family, one that loved and trusted one another more than some actual families.

Enjolras was the first person to arrive, of course; as soon as the bell had rung to free him from the extended that AP Chemistry was already shaping up to be, he had all but sprung out of his seat and sprinted through the halls and down the two flights of stairs separating him from the performing arts department. He wasn’t the only person to arrive early. Feuilly swept in right behind him with a fresh face at her side, a pretty girl who Enjolras vaguely recognized as attending Musichetta’s church. Feuilly waved jovially in his direction before plopping into a seat six rows behind him; sitting in the front row made her feel exposed.

Soon, more of his friends started to filter in: Joly and Bossuet, bickering good-naturedly about a book they had both read over the summer; Jehan Prouvaire, entirely engrossed in The House of the Spirits while navigating the gently sloping aisle with a grace born from years of ballet and probably also superpowers; Musichetta, already surrounded by a gaggle of enchanted underclassmen as she settled next to Joly and Bossuet; Bahorel and Montparnasse, an unlikely friendship that had sprung up over the summer during That Pool Party That We Are Forbidden To Talk About; and Combeferre and Courfeyrac, his oldest and dearest friends, arriving uncharacteristically late. Combeferre stopped at the top of the aisle, scanning the kids gathered in the house; finally, he located Enjolras, and they jogged down to join him in the front.

“Hey,” Enjolras greeted them. “Slowing down a bit, are we?”

Combeferre shook his head. “No, it’s not that. We both have AP Calculus – the one taught by R’s dad – and he wouldn’t let us leave when the bell rang.”

“He’s a demon,” Courfeyrac added. “Totally humorless.”

“That’s a shame,” Enjolras said, or at least tried to, because he was pretty sure that his heart had just jumped into his mouth at the mention of Grantaire, and a human heart is not an easy thing to form words around.

Grantaire, who Enjolras had spent the past eight years constantly at odds with. Grantaire, who was not only capable of constantly outsmarting and outperforming him, but who was also actually driven enough to act on that capability. Grantaire, with whom Enjolras had begun to form a tentative friendship during last year’s spring musical. Grantaire, who had promised to call him over the summer and then never did.

Just then, the theatre door swung open, and, as if summoned by Enjolras’ uncertainty and quiet hurt, Grantaire entered, looking for all the world as if not a day had gone by since Enjolras had last seen him. He moved with a swagger that suggested he had every right to take his time, even though he had just barely escaped being late. He surveyed the assembled class slowly, lazily, before joining Joly, Bossuet, and Musichetta. Enjolras registered, with a faint twist of pain between his ribs, that Grantaire hadn’t even bothered to make eye contact with him.

There was a gentle, throat-clearing cough to his left; Enjolras turned, with eyebrows raised, to see Combeferre looking speculatively at him over the top of his Atticus Finch glasses. His expression was soft.

“Don’t worry,” he murmured, quiet enough that only Enjolras and Courfeyrac could hear him. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“I don’t know what you’re –"

Courfeyrac cut him off with a gentle elbow to the side. “It’s alright, E. I don’t think it has anything to do with you.”

Why did his friends have to be so vague when they were trying to be supportive?

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Combeferre and Courfeyrac exchanged one of their Looks. It had always been an inexplicable aspect of their friendship that Combeferre and Courfeyrac could communicate with one another entirely through facial expression, but Enjolras lacked the social skills to participate in these conversations. If he had to guess, he’d say this particular Look meant something like: is he actually serious?

“What? Why are you looking at each other like that?”

Courfeyrac looked at Enjolras, then back at Combeferre, who was raising a single eyebrow at him. The degree of control Combeferre held over each of his eyebrows individually was unparalleled by anyone Enjolras had ever met. He made a mental note to ask him to show him how he did it at some point; one never knew when a skill like that could be useful onstage. Finally, he sighed. “You know, if you haven’t figured it out for yourself by now, I don’t think it’s really our place to tell you.”

Enjolras was still puzzling over this totally reasonable and not at all cryptic response when Dr. Mabeuf walked onto the stage, and he had no choice but to give him his full attention.

**

“Romeo and Juliet?”

After Dr. Mabeuf had dismissed the theatre class, they’d moved to loitering in the small courtyard directly outside the auditorium. Enjolras was agitated.

“Yes, Enjolras,” Combeferre sighed patiently, “this year’s fall play is Romeo and Juliet. It’s an entirely respectable choice, albeit predictable.”

Enjolras sputtered. “Entirely respectable –"

“Exactly what is your issue with Romeo and Juliet, Musagetes?”

Enjolras’ indignation, already sparked, seemed to flare into full flame at the sound of that voice. He spun around, eyes flashing, to find Grantaire smirking at him in the same insufferable way that had been doing inexplicable things to Enjolras’ blood pressure since they were nine years old. He searched for his words. “Well, it’s tired. If we want to show the people Shakespeare, he wrote almost forty plays for us to choose from, so it seems absurd to pick the play that every child in this country is forced to study in ninth grade English. It seems like it would be far more rewarding and productive to choose a less performed work – show our audience something they might not have seen before.”

Grantaire just raised a single eyebrow at him.

“Has it occurred to you that the reason it’s so widely performed is that it’s widely loved? You can’t claim that people don’t care about a work with God only knows how many adaptations. Hell, Bernstein even composed a musical from it, and we all know about your weird Bernstein obsession, so don’t even try to pretend that West Side Story is an exception, because that’s bullshit.”

“It is not an obsession,” Enjolras grumbled, feeling petulant and wrong-footed in the way that he only ever seemed to be after talking to Grantaire.

Grantaire merely shook his head with a sigh, then shouldered his backpack, and turned on one heel to make his way to the parking lot. Enjolras was left staring after him, wondering how it was that after an entire semester of making peace with one another, they’d gone straight back to square one. He managed to tear his eyes away from the Grantaire’s retreating figure to find Combeferre and Courfeyrac in the middle of one of their silent conversations.

“What?”

Combeferre blinked at him, before shaking his head in resignation and pulling his glasses off to polish their lenses on the hem of his button-up shirt. “The two of you are like children, you know that?”

Enjolras frowned at him. “I—”

“I agree with Combeferre,” Courfeyrac interrupted. “It’s been the same thing since we were kids. Don’t you think it’s time to move past it? I mean, it’s been, like, ten years or something, right?”

“It makes the rest of us kind of uncomfortable,” Combeferre added. “Especially after you guys were getting on so well towards the end of last year. Going from that back to this, the childish sniping at each other – well, it’s jarring. I understand if you can’t be best friends, but if you could at least try to be civil, it would make everyone’s lives easier.”

“You’re right,” he acquiesced after a beat of silence. He swung his bag over his shoulder and smiled at the two of them. “How are you always right?”

“It’s a refined skill,” was Combeferre’s flat reply. “Now I have to take off. My grandparents are coming over for dinner tonight, and my mom will be pissed if I’m late. Courfeyrac, do you need a ride or not?”

“Yeah, I’m coming. E –" Courfeyrac gave him a ridiculous, melodramatic bow. “Don’t think too hard, okay?” He clapped him on the back, and then he and Combeferre walked off in the same direction Grantaire had gone towards student parking. Enjolras waved after them, before turning back around into the school. He had a monologue to choose.

**

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages. At first the infant…”

The words rolled off of Enjolras’ tongue, but they didn’t stop there; in the wake of their rolling, they floated into the air, spinning as if propelled by wind and glittering golden as if spun of fine crystal.  
If there was one fact Enjolras know about himself above all else, it was that he was a damn good actor.

“…and whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, that ends this strange eventful history, is second childishness, and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

The speech was concluded. For a moment, there was a perfect, ringing silence, no one wanting to bring an end to the magic that had been thrown over them all; then a burst of enthusiastic applause.

“Thank you,” Enjolras said, bowing. Mabeuf gave him the rare, small, quiet smile he bestowed upon students who had performed well, and he began to walk off of the stage.

“Thank you. Next.”

Enjolras went to join Courfeyrac and Jehan in the audience. Combeferre, who intended to go into theatre tech and had worked as stage manager in every production since they were freshmen, was not auditioning; he sat next to Mabeuf at the director’s table. Enjolras sat down and turned his attention to the stage just in time to see Grantaire take his place on the stage, his diminutive stature and shining waves of almost-black hair silhouetted against the blank backdrop.

“Hi, my name is Faraz Grantaire, and I’ll be auditioning for the role of Mercutio, reciting ‘He, who the sword of heaven will bear’ from Measure for Measure.”

He cleared his throat.

“He, who the sword of heaven will bear, should be as holy as severe; pattern in himself to know, grace to stand, and virtue go…”

Grantaire’s acting was as distinct from Enjolras’ as Grantaire was from Enjolras himself. Enjolras treated words as holy, holding them in his cupped palms, worshipful, before holding them out to let his audience view how they shone. Grantaire treated them as mortal, built to be used and used well, because life allowed for nothing less and nothing more than that. His style was accessible; it was irreverent; it was absolutely fucking gorgeous.

“…so disguise shall, by the disguise’d, pay with falsehood false exacting, and perform an old contracting.”

Again, there was a softened hush, followed by a roar, and Enjolras’ heart was rattling the bars of his ribcage. Next to him, Courfeyrac gave a low whistle.

“Damn,” he whispered.

“With actors like Enjolras and R, you always forget how talented they are until you see them do it again,” Jehan agreed. “Chills. Every single time.”

Enjolras remained silent as he wondered why it was that Jehan’s assertion seemed so incongruous with how he experienced Grantaire’s acting. Obviously Grantaire was gifted, there was no denying that; but the idea of his memory watering down that giftedness was laughably incorrect. Enjolras had met Grantaire in fourth grade while rehearsing their elementary school’s production of Seussical, and from their first rehearsal Grantaire’s abilities had wormed their way into Enjolras’ soul, curled up in the space around his heart, and refused banishment. It was an inalienable fact of his existence; the sky was blue, Combeferre was his best friend, and Grantaire was a genius.

Dimly, he registered people moving in his vicinity, and realized with a start that the auditions were over.

“E?” Combeferre was saying. “You were lost in your own head a bit there – are you doing alright?”

He shook himself a little bit. “Yeah, I’m fine. What did you and Dr. Mabeuf decide in terms of casting?”

“That’s for me to know and you to find out. Are we ready to hit the road?” This last was addressed to Courfeyrac and Jehan as well as Enjolras.

“Let’s head out.”

**

Benvolio.

Enjolras was Benvolio.

It didn’t come as much of a surprise; Marius, who had landed the role of Romeo, was far better suited to the romantic lead than he was. Marius believed in soulmates and star signs; he lived his life with a kind of hopeless romanticism, enthusiastic to the point of confusion. It made absolute sense for him to be cast as the starry-eyed youth.

Enjolras had auditioned for Romeo as well, of course; he’d had a long streak of lead roles, and he hadn’t been about to break it just because of his own feelings about the text. Still, he could work with Benvolio, the cool-headed hater of conflict who tried to protect his friends only to ultimately end up alone. Less than a week, and he lost both Romeo and –

Enjolras froze. Of course. Of fucking course the character he spent the most time on stage with had to be him. The casting made perfect sense, when he thought about it; the wild child played by the wild card. And of course he must have realized it too, auditioning for a role that may as well have been written for him, but still putting in as much effort as if it weren’t an absolute certainty –

And yet, as much sense as it made, here he was.

Mercutio – Faraz Grantaire

Well, shit.

**

There was absolutely no way to sit in the plastic chairs comfortably.

Marius had given up entirely and was now sitting cross-legged on the floor. Grantaire and Bahorel were slouching, the idea being that minimizing their actual points of contact with the chair as much as possible would make it bearable. Even Enjolras, who was willing to suffer a great deal of discomfort for the sake of the art, was fast losing his tolerance.

Irma swept into the room with her battered sketchbook, and the cast and crew collectively ditched the chairs, sprawling cross-legged on the motheaten carpeting or milling around upright.  
Enjolras drifted to where Irma was now leaning against a wall, clearly waiting for Mabeuf to come back from his office. “Hey, Irma.”

She looked up at him. “What do you want?”

If Enjolras had been anyone but himself and Irma had been anyone but Irma, he might have been put off by the standoffishness of this greeting, but he was used to it by now.

“I wanted to ask what you had in mind for costume design.”

“Just dying of curiosity, are you?” she asked. “You can’t see it yet. I don’t have all the details worked out, but I have the basic idea down. It’ll come together more once I have actual materials to work with.”

“What’s the basic idea?”

“Well, unfortunately, we don’t really have the budget for period dress,” Irma’s pinched face told Enjolras what she thought of this limitation more precisely than words ever could. “I’m going to have to set it in a more recent era, which is what I’m going to talk to Mabeuf about. If we send some people out to scavenge the thrift shops and fabric stores, we could probably pull off a decent eighties setting. Don’t make that face at me, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Enjolras’ opinion of contemporary Shakespeare was not high.

“Anyway,” Irma continued, “I really do have to think about how I’m going to present this to Mabeuf, so like. It’s been nice talking to you, but go away.”

He walked away, vaguely irritated in the way he always was after talking to Irma. Try as he might, Enjolras had never really liked her; he’d always gotten the sense that she thought she was superior to everyone around her, and therefore tended not to take other people’s feelings into consideration. He remembered with particular vividness an incident in eighth grade when she’d been adjusting Grantaire’s Puck costume for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“These flowers aren’t working for me,” she’d said, scowling at Grantaire as though he’d personally inconvenienced her. He’d shifted, uncomfortable, and reached up to tug at the hideously unsubtle fake peonies she’d laced through his hair.

“What do you want me to tell you, Irma?” he’d responded. “Courfeyrac’s flowers are hardly better than mine, and you didn’t have any complaints there. You chose them in the first place.”

“That was different,” Irma had snapped back, pulling the fuchsia buds out of his hair herself and straightening the petals. “I can work with Courfeyrac. I can get anything to look cute on him, even these horrible flowers. He’s believable as a fairy. You, though,” and here she’d paused, scanning Grantaire’s face with pursed lips, before looking him in the eye to conclude, “you’re impossible.”

And she’d walked away, leaving Grantaire looking crushed in her wake. Enjolras remembered feeling slightly ill, watching the interaction, but he hadn’t done anything to intervene. He cursed his past self’s thirteen-year-old callousness. If he’d witnessed an incident like that now, he wouldn’t just stand by and let people be unkind to Grantaire. He’d march up to the perpetrator and inform them in no uncertain terms that sure, Grantaire was impossible, but it wasn’t in the way Irma had meant it. He was impossibly smart and impossibly gifted and impossibly deserving of kindness and success and and and –

And what?

It always came to this, didn’t it? Whenever Enjolras thought of Grantaire, far more frequently than he was willing to admit to himself, at some point he ran headlong into a brick wall, and he couldn’t quite reach the end of the thought. It was like a word he’d read countless times but suddenly forgot in casual conversation, always at the tip of his tongue but unwilling to reveal itself.

It was at this moment that he happened to make eye contact with Grantaire, who smiled thinly at him, before leaning over to whisper something to Joly. She tilted her head to listen, and then they both turned to look at Enjolras. He looked away quickly, cheeks burning. They’re not necessarily talking about you, pointed out the rational voice in his head. This voice tended to sound a lot like Combeferre. And even if they are, it’s not a big deal. It’s probably nothing bad.

The uneasy feeling lingered for the rest of the day, despite what he told himself.

**

“Why don’t you just talk to him?”

Enjolras groaned in protest, leaning his head against the passenger seat window. Courfeyrac was not discouraged by this reaction in the least.

“I’m just saying,” he persisted, “you’re beating yourself up over something you don’t even have all the information about. Your insistence on believing that Grantaire hates you and wants nothing to do with you is based on him, like, talking to Joly about you, which probably wasn’t even negative, because Joly doesn’t do negative gossip, being flaky over the summer, which might not even have anything to do with you, and snapping at you, which is literally just how you guys talk to each other.”

“I thought we were friends, though,” Enjolras definitely was not whining, shut up. “I thought we were finally putting all that animosity behind us, you know? All the arguing and the sniping at each other and the unpleasantness. But now it feels like we’re right back in fourth grade and he’s telling me that I’m not singing “Alone in the Universe” with enough emotional depth and expression.”

“Y’all were some weird-ass kids,” Courfeyrac muttered. Enjolras barreled on.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Courf.”

“Here’s what I think,” interjected Combeferre. “You’re putting too much of the burden of friendship on Grantaire. If you want to build that bridge, you have to lay down the first stone. Approach him. Strike up a friendly conversation. You can’t just wait for him to come to you, E. That will only end in frustration for both of you.”

“I second that,” Courfeyrac added. “Listen to your smart, socially competent friends. We know what we’re talking about.”

Enjolras looked out the car window as they turned the corner onto his street. They were probably right. He could just strike up a conversation with Grantaire. How hard could it be?

**

Grantaire was sitting on a bench in front of the school with headphones over his ears and his eyes closed when Enjolras approached him the next afternoon.

“Hey, Grantaire,” he began. No response. He cleared his throat, then paused. Although the words were indistinct, he could faintly hear an unusual combination of classical strings and intense bass drum leaking from Grantaire’s headphones. There was no way he’d be able to make himself heard over it to Grantaire, so he tried a different strategy. He reached out and tapped the other boy on the shoulder.

Grantaire started violently, and then snapped his eyes open to identify his attacker. When he saw only a rather bemused-looking Enjolras in front of him, he relaxed, but still looked confused. He slid the headphones off of his ears and put them around his neck. This made his music just audible enough for Enjolras to register that the words seemed to be in French.

“Musagetes! To what do I owe the honor?” Grantaire asked, with that cocky fucking smirk.

Enjolras felt slightly off-balance. “I just wanted to… um… would you like to run lines with me some time?”

Now it was Grantaire’s turn to look bemused. “Musagetes,” he said. “We run lines together every day. That’s all we do in rehearsal. We run lines. And we’re going to continue to do nothing but run lines for at least another few days until we start blocking. Are you alright? Is your memory starting to go? I’d have thought you were too young, but I guess you can never know for sure, right?”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” said Enjolras. “I mean outside of rehearsals. We can meet up somewhere and run lines.”

“Meet up somewhere.”

“Yeah, you know – one of our houses, or a public park, or something.”

Grantaire exhaled a burst of air, looking wary. “Why?”

This took Enjolras by surprise. “What do you mean, ‘why’?”

“I mean that I don’t understand why you’re asking me. Why not Courfeyrac, or Jehan, or Combeferre? Not to be uncooperative, Musagetes, but I’d expect you to ask someone you’re actually friends with.”

This stung, and it took Enjolras a moment to process. “Grantaire,” he began, as gently as he could, “I’m asking you because we have several scenes together, and I think both of our performances would benefit from collaborative practice. As for the issue of our not actually being friends, I didn’t realize that you felt that strongly about it, but I can see what you mean. That being said, I’d really like for that to change. I want to be friends with you, Grantaire. Let me be your friend.”

Grantaire looked dumbfounded, and there were several long moments of silence. Finally, he choked out, “…okay.”

Enjolras couldn’t help the giddy smile that came onto his face at that. “Great! You have my number, right?”

“…yeah.”

“So we can meet up soon.”

“Okay. Was that all, or…?”

Enjolras paused. “Yeah, I think that was all.”

“Great. Cool. Good talk, Musagetes. See you soon.” Grantaire’s shaking hands as he reached up to reposition his headphones on his ears belied his casually dismissive tone. Enjolras paused before turning to leave.

“You know, listening to music that loud through headphones is really bad for your hearing.”

“Don’t tell me what to do. You’re not my mom or Joly.” Grantaire shot back.

“Right, right,” said Enjolras, unsure what to do now. He figured he should probably head home. “See you soon, Grantaire.”

“That you will, Musagetes,” Grantaire replied, almost to himself, as he watched Enjolras walk away. “That you will.”

**

Two days later, Enjolras and Grantaire sat in Enjolras’ bedroom, running lines.

“I pray thee, good Mercutio,” recited Enjolras, from where he was perched on the end of his bed, “let’s retire. The day is hot, the Capels are abroad, and, if we meet, we shall not ‘scape a brawl, for now these hot days is the mad blood stirring.”

Grantaire laughed at him, turning the desk chair in circles with his feet. “Thou art like one of those fellows that, when he enters the confines of a tavern, claps me his sword upon the table and says, ‘God send me no need of thee!’ and by the operation of the second cup draws him on the drawer, when indeed there is no need.”

Enjolras feigned offense and confusion. “Am I like such a fellow?”

“Come, come, thou art as hot a Jack in thy mood as ay in Italy, and as soon moved to be moody and as soon moody to be moved.”

“And what to?”

“Nay, an there were two such, we should have none shortly –" Grantaire was cut off by his phone ringing, and he looked down at it in surprise, as though he had forgotten it was there. “Hold up, it’s Bossuet. Give me a second.” He answered the phone.

“Hey, what’s up?... Enjolras’ house… no, you prick, we’re running lines… yes, ‘actually’… no… yes… no… fuck off… what do you mean, it’s broken? It’s a lead pipe, how do you… oh… I see… look, I am not the right person for you to call for this. Try Feuilly… yeah, see ya. Tell her I said ‘hi’… bye.”

He hung up.

“Sorry about that, Bossuet did some dumb shit that led to some other dumb shit that he needs help sorting out.” This was said in the same tone of voice one might use to talk about one’s new puppy pissing on the carpet – sure, it was undesirable, and everyone would be a little better off if it hadn’t happened, but at the same time, it was impossible to be mad about it.

“Your ringtone is the same song you were listening to before,” Enjolras blurted. He’d only heard the odd, arresting melody faintly, but he’d been unable to get it out of his head since. Grantaire looked confused.

“Before?”

“You know. When I asked you to come run lines with me?”

“Oh,” said Grantaire. “I guess it is.”

“It’s a good song,” Enjolras persisted. “What is it?”

Grantaire seemed taken aback for a second, before shaking his head, bemused, and pulling something up on his phone. “Here it is. Just listen to it.”

Enjolras did. When the song ended, he took a closer look at the title.

“Wait, this is from…”

“Yeah,” Grantaire confirmed. “I’m a bit surprised you like it, actually, considering how much you hate the story. I guess there’s no accounting for taste, huh?”

“I don’t hate the story,” Enjolras argued. “I just don’t understand why everyone treats it like this gold standard of tragedy, when it’s really just about teenagers making bad choices.”

“Well, that’s just it, Musagetes. That’s what makes it such a tragedy. They’re teenagers, and they don’t have anyone to help them. That’s why it gets so out of hand. Their mistake is the same mistake most teenagers make, but most teenagers don’t end up dead because of it.”

“There were people who could help them, though,” Enjolras countered. “Romeo had smart friends. Mercutio and Benvolio could have figured something out.”

“Really. You really think Mercutio would have had a better idea. Mercutio, who spends most of his time on stage being obnoxious.”

“Benvolio, then.”

“Benvolio couldn’t even keep Mercutio alive, Enjolras. Is that a guy who’d have been able to make Romeo see reason?”

“Well, I guess not.”

“Exactly.”

“I still just think it could have been handled better,” Enjolras insisted mulishly.

Grantaire rolled his eyes with a smirk, then raised an eyebrow at him. Enjolras was suddenly keenly aware that Grantaire had rolled much closer to him in the desk chair during their discussion.

“Though wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes,” Grantaire murmured, so close that Enjolras could see the individual hairs in his eyebrows, and was it just Enjolras, or was the sound of his blood rushing in his ears suddenly very audible?

“But my eyes are blue,” Enjolras responded, breathless. Grantaire gave a bark of laughter.

“It’s from the play, Enjolras. You should know that. Usually you know everyone else’s lines just as much as your own.” He laughed again, spinning back to a safe distance away and leaving Enjolras feeling strangely empty.

“…oh.”

“I think that’s probably our cue to stop. This was great, don’t get me wrong, but my dad will go ballistic if I miss curfew again, so I should get going.”

This was deeply disappointing to Enjolras, but he concealed it by saying, “Okay, I get it. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Grantaire smiled at him – not the maddening smirk, but the real, warm, rare smile. Enjolras felt like he’d been doused in warm water. “Looking forward to it, Enjolras.”

After he had left, Enjolras looked up that song and played it again and again until he was too tired to do anything but collapse into bed.

He dreamed of sparkling dark eyes and that same soft smile.

**

“See, Enjolras,” Bahorel said, “your problem is that you’re such a good-looking motherfucker, you don’t actually have to worry about whether clothes look good on you, so you never had to develop a sense of style. It’s pretty easy to figure out, psychologically.”

“That sounds like some pseudoscience to me,” Grantaire drawled, idly flipping a few hangers back and forth.

“Shut up, R, you’re interfering with my process.”

“What process?” Jehan asked, amused. This shopping trip was becoming less productive by the second. Theoretically, their objective was to find articles of clothing that Irma could realistically use to construct costumes, but like most outings of this kind, the trip had soon devolved into Grantaire deliberately offering up the ugliest items he could find while Bahorel ruthlessly mocked Enjolras’ fashion sense. It was unclear exactly why Jehan had been invited along, as Jehan’s wardrobe tended to mirror that of a hippie flower child who had hit a midlife crisis and spontaneously decided to adopt five cats.

“Why did you choose this place, anyway?” asked Grantaire, pulling out a poisonously yellow sweater and holding it up to examine it more closely. “I mean, I get that Irma’s going for that, like, retro vibe, but is our friendly neighborhood Value Village really the best place to find that?”

“Technically, it isn’t our neighborhood Value Village,” Enjolras pointed out. “We’re so far out from where any of us live that we might as well be in a different school district. I think we should’ve stuck with that one by Musichetta’s house, or maybe the fabric store down the street from the library.”

“The one by Musichetta’s spoken for,” Bahorel said, with a crease between his brows that suggested he was less than pleased with the situation. “Montparnasse and Courfeyrac beat us to it, and decent bolts of fabric cost more than anything we could find here. Stop complaining, there’s probably some awesome stuff lurking around here somewhere.”

“Bahorel, this place is a dump,” Grantaire pointed out. “Half of the lightbulbs in the ceiling are burned out, the shoe aisle smells like cat piss, and I don’t even want to think about what the stain on this sweater might be.”

“Well, we don’t have to shop for shoes, anyway – Irma says the ones we already have will work just fine. And give me that,” he adds, snatching the sweater from Grantaire’s hands. “I think she was  
planning to put Tybalt in bright colors. It’ll be fine, we can just run it through the laundry a few times.”

Grantaire grimaced, then went back to his lazy perusal of the racks. “Whatever, man. You’re the one who’s gonna have to wear it.”

Bahorel blanched, then looked more closely at the stain. “On second thought,” he said, holding the offending garment far, far away from his body, “let’s check out that fabric store.”

**

“Hold, please.”

Dr. Mabeuf’s voice rang out across the auditorium, cutting off Grantaire as he compelled Marius to attend the Capulets’ ball. Action on the stage came to a complete stop as they waited for him and Combeferre to confer. It appeared to be a very intense discussion.

“Okay, everyone,” Combeferre finally announced, “take ten. When we come back, we’re going straight into the Capulet party, so be prepared.” There was a chorus of “thank you”s as everyone ran off to find water bottles and bathrooms.

Enjolras dug a granola bar out of his backpack, singing under his breath.

“Well, well, well, what have you been listening to, Musagetes?”

He turned to look Grantaire in the eye. “I told you it’s a good song.”

“Oh, I know. I just didn’t expect you to actually listen to it again after I showed it to you,” Grantaire admitted, scratching the back of his neck.

Enjolras frowned. “You’re my friend. You showed me a song you like, and I liked it, too. Of course I listened to it again.”

“Oh. Oh. Okay. Yeah, that’s fine. Okay.”

“Did you not want me to listen to it again?”

“No, that’s not it. I just wasn’t expecting you to.”

“Grantaire,” Enjolras said gently, “I was serious when I told you I wanted to be your friend. You don’t need to be surprised every time I treat you like I care about you, because I do.”

“Okay,” said Grantaire, “okay, I can work on that.”

“Good. Also, I was meaning to ask: Petite-Picpus Academy is doing The Importance of Being Earnest, and they start rehearsal in the summer instead of the fall, so they’re opening tomorrow night. Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Jehan, and I were thinking of going. Do you want to come with us?”

For a moment, Enjolras was afraid he’d crossed some kind of line; Grantaire looked like he’d been punched in the gut, leaving Enjolras worried. Was he being too pushy about the friend thing? Was this too much? Between the running lines, the nightmarish thrift store adventure with Bahorel and Jehan, and now this new invitation, was he forcing his company on Grantaire? The fear dissolved, however, when Grantaire recovered from his apparent shock to give him the same smile as when he’d left Enjolras’ house days before.

“Yeah, Musagetes. I’d love to.”

**

The audience was abuzz after the performance, flooding from the theatre doors in a noisy, crowded rush. It was all Enjolras could do to keep track of his friends.

“I was really impressed with this production,” Combeferre said, ducking around an elderly couple who had decided to stop in the middle of the theatre lobby for no discernable reason whatsoever.

“I was, too,” Grantaire agreed from somewhere around Enjolras’ right shoulder. “Next time I see Louison, I’ve gotta tell her how cool that lighting design was. The bit with their shadows against the backdrop was really well-executed.”

“See,” Enjolras said, contemplatively, “this is what happens when a school bothers to give its arts programs adequate financial support. That production design was above and beyond anything we could’ve done with our budget. Ah – here we go!”

They’d finally made it to the doors, and their discussion continued as they walked to the parking lot.

“I don’t know that that’s totally fair, E,” Courfeyrac said. “We hold our own pretty well.”

“Yeah, because we have talented people in our program,” said Enjolras, “and we do the best we can with what we have. But we never really seem to achieve our full potential, and I would argue that it definitely has something to do with our lack of funding.”

Grantaire broke in. “What difference does it make?”

Enjolras stopped walking and turned to him, frowning. “Excuse me?”

“What difference does it make?” Grantaire repeated. “I mean, yeah, it would be nice if the school gave us decent funding, or any funding at all, for that matter, since to the best of my knowledge, they give the theatre program exactly zero dollars. We’d be able to charge less for tickets, and maybe Mabeuf wouldn’t make us all sell chocolate bars in the spring. Sure. But every department in our  
school is underfunded – why is this the one you choose to focus on?”

Enjolras clenched his jaw and took a second to collect his temper.

“That’s just the thing, though,” he answered once he trusted himself enough to speak. “Not every department in the school is underfunded. There is one notable exception.”

“The athletic department,” Grantaire filled in. “Well, duh. Welcome to every public school in America, and may I remind you that a sizable percentage of the theatre program are also student athletes? You play varsity soccer, Enjolras. Bahorel and I do wrestling. Florèal plays volleyball, Cosette is a gymnast, Combeferre and Jehan are swimmers—”

“That’s hardly the point,” Enjolras interrupts him. “The point is that sports programs get more money than almost every other department combined, while music and fine arts get pennies and drama gets quite literally nothing, in spite of the monumental importance of arts education.”

Grantaire raised an eyebrow, making a face of exaggerated interest. Enjolras couldn’t really tell if he was genuinely intrigued or simply mocking him, but fuck it; Grantaire brought this on himself, so he might as well get the full spiel.

“No one really realizes the value of the arts in a society,” Enjolras said, “because no one ever stops to consider where we would be without them. Yes, obviously other pursuits are important – the sciences, government, technology and the like. They’re what keep us alive, and I’m not in any way trying to minimize their importance. But the arts – music, literature, all of it – that’s what gives us our entire reason for staying alive in the first place. It’s what motivates us to keep going, to keep walking through the flames. And on top of that, when used correctly, the arts can be a powerful tool for social change. I mean, think about Angels in America. Think about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Think about Marvin Gaye and What’s Going On. The arts hold incredible potential for opening people’s eyes, for holding powerful people accountable and for bringing about real progress.”

“But for any of that to happen,” Combeferre cut in, less an interruption and more a continuation, “the arts need to be made accessible for everyone, regardless of background, and one of the most profound ways that can happen is through arts education. That means community outreach from major arts organizations, like museums or opera houses, it means affordable theatre tickets being made available for young people, and it means school arts programs. Education – I mean, when you get right down to it, education is nothing short of miraculous. I do truly believe that with enough education, most, if not all, of the world’s problems can be solved. Therefore, arts education is a crucially important way to empower young people to change the world for the better.”

“And for the most part, I agree with the both of you,” Grantaire said. “I mean, I think the whole ‘art can save the world’ thing is slightly ludicrous, but yeah, I believe the arts are important. I just don’t think there are enough other people who really share that view.”

“You’re wrong,” Enjolras tells him. “God, how can you be so wrong?”

Grantaire shrugged. “What can I say? It’s a gift.”

And with that, he turned away, walking to his car without looking back.

**

“I dreamt a dream tonight.”

“And so did I!”

“Well, what was yours?”

“That dreamers often lie.”

It was the fourth time they had run the scene, with Grantaire’s antagonism as Mercutio increasing more and more every time. Additionally, though Enjolras would never have admitted to noticing it, Grantaire had become very touchy with him, at times leaning against him with a hand laid across the back of the neck, and once stepping into Enjolras’ personal space to help him to fasten a mask.

“In bed asleep while they do dream things true.” Marius insisted, beseeching Mercutio to understand.

“O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.” And with that, Grantaire launched into his wild routine, moving violently as he described the chariot of the fairies’ midwife, before a seamless transition into his next point, and his next actions.

“And in this state,” he explained, coming to a stop between them, “she gallops night by night.” A hand came up, weaving itself into Enjolras’ hair, though the words were still addressed to Marius.  
“Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love,” and on ‘love’, the curls were ruffled and the hand withdrawn.

“On courtiers’ knees, who dream on curtsies straight, o’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees,” while slowly sweeping into a curtsy that could, indeed, make a queen cry out in envy, before abruptly straightening with a spin on one heel.

“O’er ladies’ lips,” and here the voice deepened into a purr, and Enjolras was certain everyone in the room could hear his stuttering heartbeat, “who straight on kisses dream, which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are.” Grantaire crossed to the other side of Marius and swung an arm across his shoulders, a move that would have been unsuccessful had it been attempted on any of his taller friends.

“Sometimes she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose,” he continued, returning to his normal voice, “and then dreams he of smelling out a suit, and sometimes comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail tickling a parson’s nose as ‘a lies asleep –" and here he lifted the arm from across Marius’ shoulders to above his own head, and bumped him with his hip so that he would stumble towards Enjolras, who put him in a headlock and tousled his hair before releasing him. Smirking, Grantaire delivered the next line: “Then he dreams of another benefice.”

Grantaire stalked across the stage to Enjolras and looped an arm around his waist, hand resting on hip. “Sometimes,” he said, other hand coming up to rest on Enjolras’ collarbone, “she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck, and then dreams he of cutting foreign throats, of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades, of healths five fathom deep; and then anon drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,” he moved the hand from the collarbone to the shoulder, before removing himself altogether. Enjolras was suddenly finding it very hard to breathe.

“And, being thus frighted, swears a prayer or two and sleeps again.” And here his performance takes on a touch of wildness and anger.

“This is that very Mab,” he all but spits in Marius’ face, growing more unhinged with each line, “that plats the manes of horses in the night and bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs which once untangled much misfortune bodes. This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs, that presses them and learns them first to bear, making them women of good carriage: This is she –"

“Peace, peace!” Marius interrupted, the very image of confused desperation. “Mercutio, peace! Thou talk’st of nothing.”

Enjolras came forward, careful not to make any sudden movement, and rested a soothing hand on Grantaire’s shoulder.

“True,” Grantaire replied, jaw tense, “I talk of dreams. Which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy, which is as thin of substance as the air and more inconstant than the wind, who woos e’en now the frozen bosom of the north, and being anger’d puffs away from thence, turning his face to the dew-dropping south.”

“This wind you talk of blows us from ourselves. Supper is done, and we shall come too late,” Enjolras almost murmured the line, gently placating, and Grantaire turned to him. Enjolras almost broke character. There was something in Grantaire’s eyes that couldn’t be mistaken for the persona he’d adopted as Mercutio. It was a vulnerable, quiet pain, one that Enjolras couldn’t interpret but that nonetheless cut him to the bone. He registered, with a sense of dim recognition, that Marius had finished his last line, and was waiting for him to hit his cue.

“Strike, drum,” he recited, still unable to tear his eyes from Grantaire. Marius cleared his throat gently, and oh, that’s right, they were supposed to be exiting.

He heard Dr. Mabeuf’s dismissal, and turned his head for a moment to pay attention; when he looked back, Grantaire was already leaving, swinging his bag over one shoulder and running for the door.

“Grantaire!” he called after him, but Grantaire was already gone.

Enjolras didn’t go after him.

**

[From: Enjolras 10:52 PM] Grantaire? Are you ok?

[From: Enjolras 10:53 PM] Why did you run away like that? I’m worried about you.

[From: Enjolras 10:56 PM] Is there something bothering you? Do you want to talk about it?

[From: Grantaire 11:14 PM] Go to sleep, Musagetes. U don’t need to worry about me.

**

“Do you really think she’d go for it?”

Enjolras was leaned against the piano in the choir room, empty but for him and Grantaire.

“For sure,” Grantaire replied, with that cocky smirk. “We need a song for the Capulet masquerade scene, and this is not only a super cool, party-appropriate number, its inclusion would also be super meta, even if no one in the audience got it.”

“But how would we convince her?”

“Simple,” he answered, matter-of-fact. “We ask Azelma. She’s super chill, she’ll go along with anything. Azelma asks Èponine, who’ll find it funny and clever but won’t admit to finding it funny and clever if it comes from anyone but Azelma. Èponine asks Jehan, who thinks it’s awesome. Jehan asks Combeferre, who can’t deny him anything—”

“Wait,” Enjolras interrupted, surprised. “Combeferre and… Jehan?”

Grantaire looked confused. “Yeah, dude, it’s not official or anything, and neither of them will admit to it, but it’s very obvious that they’re very into each other.”

Enjolras frowned. How could he have missed that?

“Musagetes,” said Grantaire, patiently, “he’s your best friend. Are you really that oblivious?”

“I guess so,” he muttered in reply with furrowed brow. “If I missed that, what else am I not seeing?”

Grantaire leaned back in his chair, which was no easy feat, considering that his chair was a piano bench. “Well, let’s see,” he began. “The sky is blue. Bahorel has a fascinating and contradictory personality.”

“R—”

“What? I thought I should probably start with the incredibly obvious stuff, considering how oblivious you’ve just proven yourself. Don’t want to hit you over the head with too much knowledge too fast. What else? Climate change is real. Combeferre is terrifyingly smart. Oh,” he added casually, “and Florèal dumped me last spring.”

Enjolras had, actually, been aware of that, and as much as he wanted his friends to be happy and content, he remembered feeling a rush of relief when Courfeyrac told him the news because they just weren’t right for each other, goddammit.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Grantaire assured him. “We’re both better off this way. She’s free to date some nice guy from the lacrosse team – well, actually, he’s not that nice, he’s a bit of a douche, really, but he’s nice to her, so I guess that’s what matters – and I’m free to… well. Anyway. Back to our evil plan.”

Enjolras nodded, but his mind was stuck on that unfinished thought. Free to… what? What is he free to do?

“So, Jehan convinces Combeferre,” Grantaire continued, “and Combeferre uses his magical powers of stage management and logical reasoning to sell Mabeuf on the whole thing. Is this a brilliant plan or is this a brilliant plan?”

“I think it might be a brilliant plan,” Enjolras laughed, shoving his questions to the back of his mind. It wasn't his business, it wasn't his business, it wasn't his business. “This could be awesome.”

“Well, of course it could, Musagetes,” Grantaire shot back, smiling softly. “It was our idea, wasn’t it?”

Grantaire stood, clearly bored with the piano, and went to poke around in the small walk-in closet that Ms. Simplice, the choir director, used for storage.

“I hope they get their shit together soon,” Grantaire continued, rustling around in the cramped space. “I hate it when there’s that sort of, like, will-they-won’t-they energy between people I’m friends with. It makes things so awkward, don’t you agree?”

“I guess,” Enjolras replied. He’d never really noticed anything of the sort, but then again, he wasn’t exactly perceptive about these things.

“Oh my God, Enjolras, look at these!”

Enjolras stood to see what Grantaire had discovered. The shorter boy was standing in the doorway to the closet, with one hand on a rolling clothes rack crammed with –

“Choir robes,” Grantaire said with glee. “Hideous maroon choir robes. Look, they’re even monogrammed!”

It was true. Each shapeless, highly flammable polyester garment had MHS emblazoned across the collar in noxious yellow letters.

“I’d suggest that we burn them,” Grantaire said, running a hand across the dusty fabric of one of the robes, “but I doubt the choir’s getting any more money than we are, and they’d have to replace them. Shame.”

Enjolras scowled. “I still don’t understand how you can just stand by and accept that the school is giving us less than we deserve.”

“It’s the way things are, Enjolras,” Grantaire rolled his eyes. “I’m not interested in fighting an impossible battle.”

“How do you know it’s impossible?”

Grantaire scoffed. “Because I know how people behave, and I know that apathy usually wins out? Look, obviously it would be nice to have a decent budget, but what do you think we could really do to change how the administration allocates funding?”

“There are a lot of things we could do,” Enjolras hissed. “If we raise awareness and get the community involved, they’d have to give in.”

“They won’t listen to us, Enjolras!” Grantaire cried. “All anyone will hear is a bunch of entitled kids whining about not having what they want. No one in this state cares about arts education. Nobody in this school gives a damn about anything but athletics.”

Enjolras shook his head, nostrils flaring. “That doesn’t mean we can’t try.”

All the fight seemed to leave Grantaire. “Sometimes there are fights you just can’t win, Musagetes. You need to be able to recognize them.”

He picked up his bag and left the room with a sigh, leaving Enjolras breathing heavily and thinking fast.

**

Enjolras climbed into Combeferre’s car and slammed the door loudly for dramatic effect.

“We’ve got a cause.”

**

Enjolras was sitting on a bench in a public park with a printed aerial photograph of the neighborhood on his lap, frowning thoughtfully, when Feuilly and Jehan approached him. He looked up to greet them.

“How did it go?”

“Oh, pretty well,” Feuilly answered, holding out her own satellite map for him to examine. “We split up to cover more ground. Obviously there were a lot of people who slammed their doors in our faces, but there were also quite a few who said they’d call or write the district.”

“That’s good,” Enjolras said, but something seemed off about the map, or more specifically, the number of houses marked on it. “How the hell did you get around to all of these houses? I only have about two thirds of this number marked off, and I was out for almost as long as you were.”

She shifted uncomfortably as Enjolras looked at Jehan’s map as well.

“You have the same thing! How were you both so efficient?”

“We weren’t, it’s just –" Feuilly began, but Jehan elbowed her in the ribs before she could finish.

“Maybe we talked faster than you did,” he suggested, shooting Feuilly a look that Enjolras couldn’t read. “You can be kind of given to pontificating. We’re just not as intense as you are.”

“Yep, that’s it,” Feuilly chimed in. The tips of her ears had begun to turn pink. “We were just giving ‘em the facts, plain and simple, no speechifying.”

Enjolras frowned, unconvinced. “Still, I don’t see how that would allow for –"

“Oh, would you look at the time,” Jehan interrupted loudly, flicking back the sleeve of his unjustifiably frilly cardigan and checking his watch, “it’s starting to get late. We’d better hustle if we’re going  
to meet Musichetta at Baskin-Robbins before it closes.”

“But –“

“Come on, Enjolras,” they called, dragging Feuilly behind them.

Enjolras watched Jehan and Feuilly whispering furiously as he jogged to keep up with them. Irrational as it was, he had the unnerving feeling that something important was being kept from him.

**

It was four o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, two weeks before opening, and Mercutio was dying.

“What! Art thou hurt?” Enjolras implored, urgently approaching Grantaire.

He tried to bat him away. “Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch.”

Enjolras managed to pull Grantaire’s hand from his torso to have a look at the “wound”. He recoiled in horror.

“Marry, ‘tis enough,” Grantaire finished, breathing raggedly. He cast a desperate look around for the freshman ensemble member acting as Mercutio’s page.

“Where is my page? Go, villain, fetch a surgeon.” The boy scurried off as Marius approached.  
“Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.”

“No,” answered Grantaire, with a bitter laugh, “’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but ‘tis enough, ‘twill serve – ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.” Another laugh, this one more hysterical, and Grantaire allowed his legs to go limp, giving the impression that they had given out. He fell into Enjolras’ arms, and Enjolras stumbled as he tried to support his weight, cradling him against his chest.

“I am peppered, I warrant, for this world. A plague o’ both your houses! Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a cat, to scratch a man to death! A braggart, a rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of arithmetic!” Here he gestured at Marius, who was staring at him with wide eyes over Enjolras’ shoulder.

“Why the devil came you between us? I was hurt under your arm.”

“I thought all for the best,” Marius defended himself in a small voice. Grantaire scoffed, before turning his attention back to Enjolras, looking up at him with infinite tenderness. “Help me into some house, Benvolio, or I shall faint.”

Enjolras bowed his head, feigning heart wrenching grief, and began to help Grantaire stumble offstage.

As they exited, Grantaire made eye contact once again with Marius over Enjolras’ shoulder, and it was to him that he delivered his dying words: “A plague o’ both your houses! They have made worms’ meat of me. I have it, and soundly too. Your houses!”

And with that, they were off the stage. As Enjolras tracked Romeo’s words of grief, he worked himself up into a commendable stage cry, so that as he entered again, he was fully in tears.

“O Romeo, Romeo, brave Mercutio’s dead.”

And so the scene went, Benvolio grieving too deeply to observe Romeo’s conflict with Tybalt until it was too late, beseeching Romeo to be gone before he could be taken into custody, and crying inconsolably as he told the Prince of all that had happened before hearing his verdict and exiting for the last time.

After they were released from rehearsal, a small group congregated on the benches in front of the auditorium as Bossuet regaled them with a tale of his latest misadventures.

“…so there I am, standing in front of Safeway covered in green paint, holding this stupid pumpkin, and Musichetta pulls up to the curb in the station wagon and says to me, ‘Bossuet, you were just supposed to be getting balloons, how did this happen?’ And I look at her, and I look around, and I realize that I forgot the damn balloons and now I have to go back in.”

“I don’t understand,” Feuilly asked, frowning. “Why the hell did you go down the produce aisle in the first place?”

“Yeah,” Courfeyrac agreed, “and how did the cashier know Joly?”

“And how did the cashier know that you knew Joly?”

In the amused clamor, Combeferre turned to Enjolras.

“We’re making some progress with the community outreach,” he informed him.

“That’s good,” he responded, giving Combeferre his full attention, “that’s really good. You and I should probably talk to Dr. Mabeuf to see if he’d be willing to come with us after this production closes to present our case to the school board. I’ve been looking into it, and we might have a decent chance at convincing them to make the school move some of the funding from sports to programs with less money, including drama.”

“Let’s do that sooner rather than later,” Combeferre said. “We don’t want to approach her when she’s stressed about tech rehearsals. Maybe tomorrow afternoon?”

“Good idea,” said Enjolras.

“Irma!” cried out Florèal. Irma was just leaving the building, and she turned at the sound of her name, a rather sour look on her face.

“What’s up, Flo?” she asked.

“When can we see your gorgeous costumes?” Florèal cajoled. “We’re all just dying of anticipation, here.”

“Not until tech starts,” Irma answered. “You’re going to have to wait. Doesn’t that just suck for you?”

“Well, I’ve already seen them,” Grantaire said with a laugh, “so… whoops?”

Irma turned her attention to him, nostrils flaring. “Yes, but that was an accident, so if you could stop telling people about it, that would be great.”

Bahorel leaned forward. “C’mon, Irma,” he said, “I’m sure they’re awesome. They’re always awesome. The only time I’ve ever seen Enjolras dressed decently was when he was wearing one of your costumes.”

“Hey!” protested Enjolras.

“Don’t fight me on this, E, you know I’m right. Look at you. Is that a Hawaiian shirt?”

Enjolras looked down at what he was wearing. It was, in fact, a Hawaiian shirt. The fabric was light blue, boldly patterned with large mauve flowers.

“It is, yeah.”

“It’s awesome,” broke in Jehan, who, for the record, was wearing vibrant orange jeans and a pink sweater with a large carousel horse screen-printed on the front. “I love the flowers.”

Bahorel sighed.

“Enjolras,” he said, with an air of great patience, “remember how we agreed after the Fair Isle sweater vest that you’d bring me with you when buying clothes in the future?”

“I didn’t buy this,” Enjolras defended himself. “My aunt gave it to me for my birthday.”

He looked around for someone to back him up; Jehan, his valiant defender and partner in unfashionability, shrugged at him apologetically before burying his face in a volume of Maya Angelou, and Combeferre, whose dress sense was almost stylish enough to be a match for Bahorel’s or Montparnasse’s, looked vaguely amused.

“I like it,” Grantaire said, to Enjolras’ surprise. “It’s thematically appropriate.”

Enjolras frowned. “What do you mean?”

Grantaire looked at him appraisingly. “You know, William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. It’s cool; I’ve always thought you had kind of a young Leo vibe going on.”

Enjolras didn’t understand the reference. “I’m afraid I don’t understand the reference.”

Grantaire’s thoughtful expression morphed into one of horrified disbelief. “Wait, you mean you’ve never seen the Romeo and Juliet from the nineties? How is that possible?”

Enjolras shrugged.

“Enjolras has a thing about contemporary settings of Shakespeare,” Courfeyrac explained.

Grantaire raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yeah. His thing is that he hates them.”

Grantaire shook his head. “Well, that just won’t do,” he declared. “It’s decided. You’re going to come over to my house, and we’re going to watch it on Netflix. Actually, while we’re at it, we might as well watch the one from the sixties as well. One modern adaptation and one period piece. Are you free on Saturday?”

Enjolras nodded, slightly in shock.

“Good,” said Grantaire, and then he turned around and left for his car.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Bahorel and Courfeyrac burst out laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Enjolras asked with a frown, mostly to cover up the fact that his stomach suddenly seemed to be doing gymnastics. Upon receiving no answer, he turned to Combeferre.

“I’m sure you’ll figure it out for yourself soon enough,” he said. The corner of his mouth twitched up, a sure sign that he, too, was trying not to laugh at him.

Enjolras really needed better friends.

**

The next day, Enjolras and Combeferre sat in front of Dr. Mabeuf’s desk,

“You’ve already gotten this many people involved?” he questioned.

“Yes, ma’am,” Combeferre answered. “At some point we’re going to have to take it directly to the district, and we feel that our concerns will seem much more legitimate with you present.”

The teacher leaned back in his desk chair with a sigh.

“Look,” he began, “I understand that you’re trying to do a good thing here, and I absolutely hope that the administration comes around and starts funding us properly as a result. I think you have a decent chance. I know Superintendent Lamarque is a big supporter of school arts programs, and Lafayette will probably at the very least be amenable. But I really wish you had cleared it with me before you launched some kind of amateur grassroots campaign. It makes me look like I’m not in control of my own program. So, yes, I will accompany you to speak to whomever it is that you need to speak to, but you have to let me lead the conversation. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

Enjolras and Combeferre nodded, chastised. Dr. Mabeuf smiled.

“Good. Now get out of my office.”

**

When Enjolras knocked on Grantaire’s door that Saturday night, a girl of about eleven answered, and stared blankly at him without saying anything.

Enjolras cleared his throat. “Hey, you’re Shadi, right? Is your brother here?”

Shadi nodded, but did not say anything or move to let him in. Enjolras shifted uncomfortably.

“Uh, may I come in?”

“Shadi!” Grantaire yelled from inside the house. Suddenly, he rounded a corner and was striding down the hallway towards the open front door. “Stop being rude and let him in.”

Shadi, who had started at the sound of her name, melted away from the door and ran back through the hall, into another room, and out of sight.

“Sorry about her,” Grantaire apologized. “She’s kind of a weird kid. You can come in.”

Enjolras followed Grantaire into the house. Like Enjolras’ parents, Grantaire’s family owned a home in one of the older neighborhoods in town, but where Enjolras’ house was stuffy and full of stale air, the result of his mother and father spending too much time away, Grantaire’s house was filled with light and life. Resting on a small end table in the hallway were a bunch of pears in a rough ceramic bowl that had clearly been made by one of the two kids at an early age. A child’s yellow backpack sat at the base of the stairs, where it had presumably been dumped the previous afternoon upon returning home from school, and Enjolras couldn’t help but come to a stop, because wait, he recognized that painting.

“Isn’t this…”

“Yeah. I’m surprised you remember it,” Grantaire said, stopping beside him.

Of course Enjolras remembered it. Grantaire had been deeply invested in art when they were freshmen, never going anywhere without a sketchbook and charcoal pencils. It had been during rehearsals for Hamlet, their very first high school play in the fall of that year, that he had perfectly captured the likeness of his friends fooling around in a quiet moment, an image that he had gone home and transferred to canvas. It was a remarkably skillful painting; Grantaire was somehow just as talented an artist as he was an actor. Upon finding out about it, the entire cast and crew had pushed him to submit it to a state-wide student art competition. It had been no surprise when he came in first.

Seeing the painting again sent a wave of nostalgia through Enjolras, as he drank in the sight of his friends’ young faces. There was Combeferre, laughing as he smacked Courfeyrac in the arm with a geometry textbook; he’d forgotten that Combeferre had worn his hair in cornrows back then. Bossuet, Montparnasse, Joly, and Florèal sprawled on the floor, playing poker for a handful of rubber bands and a Dutch-English dictionary (the origins of this book were still unknown, as the school did not and had never offered Dutch as a world language course). There was Jehan, in the height of his punk phase with a vegan leather jacket and an unfortunate dye job, chatting with Musichetta, who hadn’t yet hit the growth spurt that would send her to an Amazonian height, and Feuilly, who at the time had refused to cut her wild auburn curls. Bahorel sat on top of the piano, much to Èponine’s chagrin; she gave him the stink-eye as she tried to play Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude around his dangling ankles. And there, sitting on a desk and continuing to recite lines out of a stubborn refusal to take a break from rehearsal for any reason, was Enjolras, scrawny and alarmingly pale before he’d found other hobbies to serve as healthy outlets for all of that pent-up intensity.

Enjolras reached out a hand, gently touching the corner of the frame. Grantaire coughed.

“My mom insisted on having it framed after it won the thing,” he explained. “She’s always been really supportive with the artsy shit, more so than my dad. He won’t admit it, but I think he’s still a little disappointed that I’m not going to grow up to be an engineer.” His tone was light, but there was a trace of bitterness beneath it.

“I’m sorry,” Enjolras said quietly.

“It’s okay. I wouldn’t want to be an engineer anyway, I’m shit at math. There’s a reason I’m in remedial algebra. All I care about are the arts and the people I love.”

Enjolras turned to face him, feeling suddenly bold. “And who are those people?”

Grantaire stared up into his eyes, looking dumbfounded at the question.

“You should know the answer to that perfectly well, Musagetes.”

And he hurried away, leading the way up the stairs, leaving Enjolras no choice but to follow and think about that answer that wasn’t really an answer at all.

**

Enjolras was having a hard time paying attention to the movie.

He would have found it difficult enough to focus as it was; he couldn’t stop thinking about Grantaire, and how he always seemed to raise questions without ever answering them. As smart as Enjolras was, that alone would have taken up all of his brainpower. It did not help matters that he and Grantaire were in very close proximity to one another.

Grantaire’s bedroom was located in the house’s attic, on the side facing the street. As a result, the center of the room had a ceiling about fifteen feet high, while on either side, the walls were low enough that Enjolras had to lean over to avoid hitting his head. Grantaire, at five foot three, was too short for this to be a problem, and had laughed when Enjolras had been made painfully aware of this particular architectural quirk. Now, three hours into their movie viewing, they were curled up in the massive stack of pillows that threatened to overwhelm Grantaire’s bed, with his laptop balanced across both of their laps. They were close enough that Enjolras could feel Grantaire’s ribcage expanding and contracting against his arm, which meant that Grantaire could certainly feel Enjolras’ pulse running away from him.

“What’s up, Musagetes?” Grantaire suddenly asked. “I can practically hear how loud you’re thinking.”

Enjolras paused, trying to decide which of the thoughts spinning in his brain were coherent enough to actually be vocalized.

“I was actually kind of wondering,” he began, then stopped. How could he phrase this better?

“What were you wondering?”

“I just,” he began, then stopped, wondering how to phrase this in a way that wouldn’t get Grantaire’s hackles raised. “I don’t understand how someone like you, who clearly has such an aptitude and an appreciation for the arts, can be so skeptical of our efforts to promote them.”

For a moment, Grantaire seemed to stiffen, as though he were some small animal being pursued and his only hope for survival was to stay very, very still; but then he sighed, relaxing, and the moment was over so quickly Enjolras thought he might have imagined it.

“I value the arts, Musagetes,” Grantaire said. “I value the arts so, so much. But I know the kind of people who live around here, and a lot of them don’t value the arts. I just don’t think it’s wise or productive for you to be putting so much of your time and energy into this when you’re almost certainly going to be knocked back down again.”

Enjolras considered this. “You have a point,” he said. “A lot of people around here just don’t care, that’s true. But at the same time, I need to try. This is too important not to.”

Grantaire stayed silent, and Enjolras sighed. “Let’s just watch this movie, okay?”

Grantaire exhaled shakily. “Okay.”

Enjolras smiled, and turned back to the screen to watch a Romeo who looked like Zac Efron being hassled by a blond Mercutio.

“What is he doing in the fountain?”

Grantaire laughed at him.

**

“Musagetes, wake up.”

Enjolras groaned in protest, pushing his face closer into whatever the warm, soft mass directly beneath him was.

“Musagetes…”

Grantaire’s voice sounded very close, and Enjolras slowly realised that the warm thing was moving. His eyes snapped open, and yes, yes indeed, that was the curve of Grantaire’s neck that he’d been burrowing against, thank you very much for the confirmation. He swiftly rolled off of him, mortified that he’d fallen asleep not only on Grantaire’s bed, but also on Grantaire himself.

Grantaire sat up slowly and swung his legs over the side of the bed.

“Sorry for letting you fall asleep,” he said, talking very fast. “I’d say I’m sorry that you’ll probably get in trouble with your folks, but I know they aren’t around much, so I’m guessing that won’t really be a problem. You can eat breakfast here, if you want, or you can go home. Do you want me to give you a ride? That’ll be faster than calling Combeferre. Or I guess you could walk, but that would be less convenient.”

Grantaire was obviously avoiding eye contact, and his dark complexion had taken on a decidedly pinkish note. Enjolras yawned.

“If you don’t mind, I would appreciate a ride.”

**

After Enjolras had greeted Grantaire’s parents and apologized for accidentally overstaying his welcome (his mother was very kind, his father had barely glanced away from his newspaper, and Shadi had glared at him with a level of hostility that made him extremely uncomfortable), they climbed into Grantaire’s twenty-three-year-old Honda Accord and set out for Enjolras’ house, with Enjolras providing directions in between discussing Baz Luhrmann’s take on Romeo and Juliet.

“I’m just saying,” Grantaire was just saying, “it has everything you could possibly want in a movie. Relative faith to the original text, incredible cinematography, a church choir covering Prince, visual puns, Leonardo DiCaprio…”

“I never said that I didn’t like the movie, Grantaire – left on Mercer – I just said that I’ve seen better adaptations of Shakespeare.”

“That’s your problem,” Grantaire said, taking one hand off the wheel to gesture at him, “you’re too much of a Shakespearean purist. Romeo + Juliet takes this four-hundred-year-old play, this pillar of Western theatre, and finds a way to make it feel fresh and immediate to modern viewers. It’s what Shakespeare would have wanted.”

“Shakespeare would have wanted – keep going straight through the intersection – car chases and heavy religious imagery?”

Grantaire shot him a raised eyebrow before looking back at the road. “Do you really think Shakespeare wouldn’t have written a car chase if he’d had any idea what they were?” which, point.  
“Grantaire, I liked the movie. I really did. I enjoyed the – okay, see that house? The tall grey monstrosity with the giant rhododendrons out front? Left onto that street – the avant-garde aspect to the whole thing, and I liked how it still feels cutting-edge twenty years after its release. I just prefer other adaptations of the Bard – more traditional ones.”

Grantaire smirked. “Wow, you’re going to hate Irma’s costume design.”

**

Contrary to what Grantaire believed, Enjolras did not wind up hating Irma’s costume design. In fact, as he examined himself in the dressing room mirror, he wondered why society had ever moved  
away from eighties fashion trends. Maybe then Bahorel would’ve given him less shit for his dress sense over the years.

The door opened a crack.

“Hey, are you decent?” Grantaire asked. This would’ve been considerate, but he had already opened the door, and the dressing room was shared between Enjolras, Grantaire, Bahorel, and Marius, so the sweetness of the gesture was negated.

“This is your dressing room, too,” Enjolras pointed out, turning around to greet him.

“How observant of you, Musagetes. I’m already changed; I just wanted to see your costume in the flesh.” He looked Enjolras up and down critically. “I saw the rough sketches, obviously, but it doesn’t quite compare to the real thing. You look like a John Hughes love interest.”

“Hey, yours is far more outlandish than mine, R,” Enjolras pointed out, finally taking a good look at Grantaire’s outfit. Grantaire grinned and slowly spun in a circle so Enjolras could see the full effect.

“Isn’t it awesome? Change the color scheme from ‘nineteenth century widow’ to ‘pop music royalty’ and it’s like I stepped out of Purple Rain.”

This was a very apt description. Grantaire’s outfit and whatever had been done to his hair and eyelids did make him look uncannily like Prince in 1984, if Prince had been a goth Persian teenager.

“Look, I even have the lace gloves.”

Enjolras wasn’t sure how it happened. One second he was watching Grantaire laugh, letting the sound wash over him and fill him with warmth, and the next second, it was like a piece of the puzzle was slotting into place, making the whole picture make sense, and oh, fucking Christ –

“Enjolras?” Enjolras blinked, to find Grantaire looking up at him with concern. “Are you okay, Musagetes? You looked really spaced out for a second there.”

“No, I’m fine,” Enjolras breathed. It was true; he was more than fine. “I’m wonderful, actually. Let’s go rehearse. We’re due at places any minute.”

And he left the room with a bounce in his step, leaving an exceedingly confused Grantaire to follow behind him.

**

“Combeferre, Courfeyrac, I think I’m in love with Grantaire.”

“Yes, and?”

**

It was opening night, and the air hummed with adrenaline.

Enjolras maneuvered through the crowded backstage hallway with a quivering knot of anticipation tied in his stomach. It had been three days since his emotional epiphany, and he had yet to take any action in response to it. This was partly because he was trying to follow Combeferre’s sage advice, which had been to “give yourself time to process your emotions before acting on them, Enjolras”, but mostly because he actually had no idea what he was supposed to do now.

He was vaguely aware that at some point he would have to, as Courfeyrac would put it, “make a move”. This was a prospect that both terrified and exhilarated him. The depth and extent of the feelings were thrilling to him, and left him with no doubt that they had been growing and strengthening undetected for longer than he would have ever thought possible. He only regretted being ignorant of them for so long. As it was, in the few days since they had made themselves known, the task of keeping them to himself had already grown unbearable, and he wanted nothing more than to tell Grantaire. Unfortunately, this was proving to be more of a challenge than he would have anticipated. Of course he feared rejection, but it wasn’t his primary concern; he hoped that he and Grantaire were now on good enough terms that even if his feelings were unreciprocated, he could still salvage their friendship. His main problem was that he had no idea how to go about the whole thing.

He was still contemplating all this when he turned into the bathroom and narrowly avoided being decapitated by a prop sword.

“Sorry, Enjolras,” said Bahorel, who, for the record, looked pretty much the opposite of sorry. “Just gotta get in that last-minute practice, you know? I wouldn’t want to fuck up my own death scene.”

“You’re haphazardly swinging your foil around in a restroom by yourself,” Enjolras pointed out.

Bahorel grinned. “Well, when you say it like that, it just sounds dirty.”

Enjolras blinked at him, then decided against justifying this with an answer, instead walking around him towards the stalls.

“Oh! By the way,” Bahorel added, “Combeferre was looking for you. He said that he heard back from the district office, and you guys have an appointment to speak with the school board next month. Apparently they seemed sympathetic to what we’re trying to do.”

Enjolras turned around, stunned. “Seriously? That’s incredible!”

“Yeah, man. Talk to Combeferre about it.”

“I will,” Enjolras assured him. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“Yeah, like, it’s no big deal,” Bahorel replied, before promptly going back to practicing elaborate fencing moves in the mirror. That boy’s mind was truly a mysterious place.

**

When Enjolras tracked Combeferre down, he was scowling at the props table and rubbing two fingers against his temple, thumb resting at the spot where his ear met his cheekbone. To most people, this gesture would have seemed innocuous, but Enjolras had known Combeferre long enough to recognize it as a sure sign that he could feel a migraine coming on and was cursing its timing.

“Hey, is everything okay?” he asked.

He blinked and turned to him. “Yes, Enjolras, it’s great. It’s twenty minutes to curtain and Juliet’s poison, three of the masks for the Capulet party, Tybalt’s sword, and Tybalt have all disappeared into the mire, but everything’s great, it’s just fucking peachy. What do you need?”

“I can help you with the Tybalt part,” he offered. “I just ran into Bahorel in the bathroom, he’s practicing his ninja moves. He’s got the sword, too, so that’s two out of six.”

Combeferre exhaled. “Well, he can’t do that. He might break it.”

“Plus, it’s super unsanitary to have props in there. Those bathrooms are nasty,” chimed in Joly. Enjolras jumped; he’d been so focused on finding Combeferre that he’d failed to notice Joly and Grantaire quietly chatting next to the props table. Now he found he couldn’t take his eyes off of Grantaire, who was quietly observing their discussion. He caught his eye, and Grantaire smiled at him. It felt as if Enjolras’ stomach had somehow escaped his body to pursue a better life on the road, leaving him with a strange and not altogether unpleasant sense of lightness. Combeferre cleared his throat, and he started, turning to look at him. His face had softened somewhat, and he looked at him with one eyebrow raised appraisingly (and really, between him and Grantaire, Enjolras was beginning to develop an inferiority complex around his own eyebrows and their lack of coordination).

“What did you want to ask about?” he prompted, reminding him of the reason he’d come over here in the first place.

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. I was just having a chat with Bahorel –"

“Who is currently loitering in the bathroom?”

“Who is currently loitering in the bathroom, yes. He said that we have an appointment with the school board after the play closes?”

Combeferre nodded. “Yeah, Dr. Mabeuf told me they just got back to him. He said they probably wouldn’t have taken him very seriously otherwise, but the amount of student and community  
involvement caught their attention.”

“That’s good,” Enjolras said, “that’s really good. Also unsurprising, I mean, didn’t Cosette and Musichetta get their entire church involved?”

“They did.” Combeferre confirmed. “And they were up in arms. Juliet and the nurse are members of the congregation and the school isn’t properly funding the theatre program? Of course they’ve been  
inundated with phone calls from angry Catholics. Not to mention all the people the rest of us reached, what with Courfeyrac’s social media campaign and Feuilly and Grantaire going door-to-door.”

Enjolras blinked. “Wait, Grantaire?”

He turned to look at him, only to find that Grantaire and Joly had melted away while he and Combeferre had been talking and were now nowhere to be seen.

“Yes,” said Combeferre, frowning at him in surprise, “Grantaire was one of the most dedicated people in the grassroots campaign. How did you not know? You organized it.”

Enjolras had the same question, but as he processed the new information, something started to slide into place. Hadn’t there been something ever-so-slightly off about the way Feuilly and Jehan had behaved when reporting their numbers back to him? Hadn’t he thought they’d reached improbably high numbers of people, especially compared with how much ground he’d been able to cover himself? Was it possible that it had been Grantaire who’d knocked on some of those doors, instead? Why would he have them take credit for it? And most importantly, why the sudden change of heart?

“I don’t know,” he answered, almost to himself more than to Combeferre, “but I intend to find out.”

**

It wasn’t until after the show that he got a chance to confront Grantaire about the matter. He found him alone in their shared dressing room, lacing his tattered green high-tops, and closed the door behind himself. Grantaire looked up at the sound, then raised a single infuriating eyebrow.

“’Sup, Musagetes? Good show, huh? Let’s pray the rest of them go that smoothly.” He laughed, but it was not the genuine, barking laugh Enjolras had grown accustomed to; it was a forced sound, jagged at the edges, and it hurt Enjolras to hear it.

“Yeah, it was great, but that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about,” he said, walking closer.

Grantaire took a step back. “I know you heard about the grassroots shit,” he told Enjolras, staunchly refusing to look him in the eye. “It’s true. I trekked across half of suburbia to talk your average citizens into giving a shit about the arts, then I split the area I covered in half and added half of it to what Feuilly covered and half of it to what Jehan covered. Sorry if that counts as falsifying data or whatever.”

Enjolras frowned. “Wait, do you think I’m angry at you?”

Grantaire exhaled, long and shaky. “Well, you just found out that I lied to you and pulled two of our close friends into the lie with me, so yeah, I’m kind of thinking you might be pissed at me.”

“I’m not, though,” Enjolras argued, and added, at Grantaire’s snort of disbelief, “no, I’m really not. I’m just wondering why you got involved in an effort you said yourself was bound to fail, and then pretended you had nothing to do with it. I’m confused. You confuse me.”

“The fuck do you mean, I confuse you?”

“I mean,” Enjolras began, speeding ahead with headstrong intensity, “I never know where I stand with you. I meet you at age nine, and we immediately start sniping at each other, and continue to do so for almost eight fucking years. Then, after that, when we finally start to get along with each other, you promise to call but then give me radio silence for two months. And then, just when I think we’re finally able to put all that behind us, you express disdain at a cause that has just as much impact on your life as it does on mine, only to go behind my back to aid it. So what gives, Grantaire? What am I supposed to think?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, I love you, asshole,” Grantaire snapped at him, before being immediately consumed in horror. His eyes went very wide, and he swallowed audibly.

Enjolras was frozen to the spot. “…what?”

Grantaire squeezed his eyes shut, bracing himself. “Ah, fuck it. I said I love you. I’ve loved you since we were kids, since that very first time we met during Seussical and you were singing “Alone in the Universe” better than any nine-year-old kid has any right to be singing. I just… looked at this kid, this tiny kid in a dorky sweater with this ridiculous cloud of blond hair more voluminous than the entire rest of his head, and it was like I’d been stumbling around in the dark up until that point, and someone had finally bothered to turn on the light. That’s why I was constantly at odds with you – I knew, somewhere deep inside, that you could be better than you were, better than you are, better than any of us, but only if you had someone to compete with you, and no one else was going to step up and do it. And then, somewhere down the line, I guess, I realized that it was never going to be requited, so I tried to force myself over it. I started being friendly to you instead of antagonistic and I started dating Florèal, which I realize in hindsight was kind of a dick move, using her to get over you, but I was desperate, and it didn’t matter, in the end, because it didn’t work, and eventually she figured it out and dumped me. That’s why I didn’t talk to you over the summer; I figured the only way I’d be able to get over you would be to totally cut myself off from you. And you know what?” he laughed here, bitter and almost manic. “It almost fucking worked. I would have finally, finally been able to move on with my life, but then you walked up to me and started insisting you wanted to be my friend, and I was fucked all over again. And then you introduced this harebrained scheme to get the theatre program the funding it deserves by pestering local taxpayers and I knew it could only fail because hello, this is an American fucking public school, but it was you, and if anyone could make it work it would be you, so I helped you, but I knew that openly helping would only lead to questions I didn’t want to answer, and I was so terrified that I’d mess it up and somehow disappoint you, so I tagged along with Jehan and Feuilly and convinced them to take credit for the doors that I knocked on. They didn’t understand it and they weren’t happy about it, but they’re good friends, and they could tell it was important to me, so they went along with it. Except that it was all for nothing, because now you know the truth, and even worse, you know the truth behind the truth, and you’ll never want to speak to me again, because why the fuck would you?”

It was as if a dam had broken, and all the feelings that Grantaire kept carefully stowed behind his quick wit and cool demeanor had surged outwards with unstoppable force. Now that they were out, he slumped in on himself, a posture that made him look even smaller than he was, and his eyes glittered with tears. “Why the fuck would you?” he repeated, quiet and vulnerable.

Enjolras hesitated for a second, head still spinning with all he had just heard, before gently approaching the other boy.

“Grantaire,” he said softly. Grantaire just shook his head.

“Grantaire,” he repeated, “look at me.”

Grantaire closed his eyes for a second, before slowly moving his head to look up at Enjolras. From this distance, Enjolras could see traces of stage makeup that Grantaire had missed, still lingering upon the sharp swell of his cheekbones and around his soulful dark eyes. They were even closer than they had been that day in Enjolras’ bedroom.

He would not let the moment slip by him this time.

Enjolras brought up a hand, very slowly so Grantaire could stop him if he wished, and cupped the side of his face, with his thumb resting right in front of the earlobe and the rest of his fingers brushing softly against the back of the neck.

“Grantaire,” he said once more, “of course I’ll still speak to you. My only regret is that you didn’t tell me sooner, and that it took me so long to be aware of my own feelings.”

“Wh-what…”

“It has recently come to my attention,” Enjolras explained, “that I am deeply and irrevocably in love with you, and I probably always have been. I’ve just always been too socially and emotionally incompetent to deal with it.”

“What.”

“And if you don’t mind,” Enjolras continued, “I would really like to kiss you now.”

Grantaire made a sound that could have been a laugh or a sob and pulled him down, and then they were kissing, and holy God, it felt like flying.

Enjolras resurfaced with a gasp and rested his forehead on Grantaire’s. He couldn’t stop smiling, even when the door swung open.

“Oh!” there came a squeak. “Oh, my, I’m so sorry. I’ll just, um.”

Enjolras and Grantaire turned to look just in time to see the door close on Marius Pontmercy’s freckled face, flushed scarlet. They stood for a second, staring at it silently, before catching each other’s eye and collapsing in giddy laughter.

“Do you mean it?” Grantaire asked several minutes later, when they had managed to resurface from their hysterical giggling.

“Of course I mean it,” Enjolras said, utterly serious. “I would never joke around about something like this.”

Grantaire smiled up at him, and, as Enjolras leaned down to kiss him again, he realized that this feeling, this sensation of soaring while at the same time remaining perfectly grounded, was what must have inspired Shakespeare to write all those sonnets. Suddenly he understood the urge.

“As much fun as I’m having, Musagetes,” Grantaire murmured against his lips, “I think my mother might start to be concerned if I don’t emerge soon, and you are still wearing your costume, so I’ll have to settle for seeing you tomorrow.”

He looked at him with raised eyebrows, as if waiting for confirmation.

“Yes,” said Enjolras. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Grantaire smiled at him once more before vanishing through the dressing room door, and as Enjolras changed back into his own clothing, he couldn’t hide his own smile of pure and unadulterated happiness, as if the warmth that now filled his soul could find no alternative but to overflow and spill from his face.

He’d spend the next few weeks caught up in the play. Next month, he’d go with Combeferre and Dr. Mabeuf to talk to the school board. In the spring, he’d perform in the musical, his last school production, and then he’d be walking across the stage in a different sense, with a cap and a gown instead of a costume, and then it would be off to college, and from there onwards and upwards. But tomorrow, he knew, still smiling to himself as he lightly hummed that same pulsating melody that had taken root in his brain and refused to leave, tomorrow he’d see Grantaire, and they’d make up for all those wasted years, and revel in having finally, finally done something right.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from ["Les Rois du Monde"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qcoF27iOr4) from the 2001 French musical adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, which is exactly as weird and wonderful as it sounds. This is also the song that I repeatedly reference throughout the course of this fic.
> 
> I finally figured out how to link to my [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/radiance-of-the-future), aren't you proud?


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